How to See Pretty Subtitles for MKVs and SoftSubs
There’s been a lot of debate going around about subbing groups encoding things with SoftSubs or in MKV format. I used to hate those things too, but now I find that they’re pretty awesome, especially for taking screenshots! So I did a little research and put together a little guide to get things looking pretty on Windows and Mac, displaying subtitles the way the group intended for them to look.
To see what I mean, check out these screenshots:
VS. 
Realize VLC Sucks
Don’t get me wrong. I use VLC all the time - it plays EVERYTHING and it’s easy to screencap from. HOWEVER. For MKVs and SoftSubs, it really, really, really sucks. A few issues I’ve encountered:
- Displays programming it can’t understand in curly braces {}.
- Displays in an ugly default font.
- Sometimes, ugly default font is jaggedy and unreadable depending on the programming.
- It renders multiple simultaneous subtitle lines on top of each other, making both unreadable.
There’s more, but these are the ones that irritated me.
Also be aware that VLC has a lot of older codecs and libraries that, besides making ugly subtitles, cause other issues, such as the h264 videos loading slower. Also, their settings are maybe a bit TOO complex and not very user friendly.
Pretty Subtitles In Windows
If you’re watching these types of files in windows, you really ought to be using The Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP). Wipe out any other codecs and players on your system and install CCCP, and you will never need anything else. There’s nothing more to it!
The site provides you with a utility to help track down your stray codecs, and the pack itself contains two very awesome players - Media Player Classic and Zoom Player. Don’t download them separately - use the ones that come with CCCP. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did.
Pretty Subtitles On The Mac
This is a smidgen more complicated than Windows, but not much more, I promise!
Step 1
Download and install MPlayer. You want MPlayer OS X 1.0rc1.
Step 2
Open up the preferences menu. On my machine, it’s on the top bar under MPlayer OSX:
Step 3
Under the “General” tab, set your font mirroring the settings below. You don’t have to use Gulim - any true type font (.ttf) will do. Also feel free to set the font size to “normal” instead of “small” -I just prefer mine smaller by default.
Step 4: Final Step!
Click the “Miscellaneous” tab. Check off the “Additional Settings” checkbox and paste in this line:
-ass -embeddedfonts -correct-pts -sid 0
If this doesn’t work, try adding -fontconfig at the end.
MPlayer Extras
If you still aren’t seeing subtitles, be aware of these two shortcut keys:
- v: toggles subtitles on and off
- j: shuffles through subtitles if there is more than one option
REJOICE!
You should have pretty subtitles now. These are the best options available as far as I know, though of course there is always a user choice in these things. Hopefully this has helped you out a little!
References
Here are the references and links I’ve used for this post.
- http://forums.animesuki.com/showpost.php?p=824048&postcount=28
- http://www.cccp-project.net/
- http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html
- http://forums.animesuki.com/showpost.php?p=820875&postcount=18
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dee said,
August 24, 2007 @ 5:21 am · Quote
Thank you so much!!
I’m so glad someone finally put up a basic step by step on how to get softsubs working on a mac without having to install X11. VLC wasn’t sutting it either…OVERLAP is all I got.
So, I called the MPlayer going and followed your procedure and no more overlap, and things seem to play fine. ( I am playing a MKV file with a .sub file)
Never ran across the softsub problem till tonight…
thanks again!!
alangenh said,
November 1, 2007 @ 11:33 pm · Quote
Thank you! This helps very much.
Ulti said,
November 16, 2007 @ 9:27 pm · Quote
I always knew, that MPlayer somehow should support subtitles, but I never got them working. Now they do. Thanks a lot for that!
Just to Mention: It also worked with Quicktime Player + Perian. But with the newest 7.3, Audio in mkv-files is broken.
Trejkaz said,
January 2, 2008 @ 7:39 am · Quote
Too bad MPlayer can’t get the subtitle timing right though. It always displays them about a second too late, and changing the sub delay setting doesn’t even work around it.
I’m really missing having a working QuickTime since Apple broke it around the time of the Leopard release.
Incidentally the VLC {curly brackets} are interesting as it lets you see translation comments. I’m beginning to look at that as a feature as there are quite a few interesting notes hidden in things I watch that I never realised was there until recently. It will be too bad when they finally “fix” that “bug”.
Andrew Dudzik said,
February 6, 2008 @ 12:29 am · Quote
Amazing! You’ve made me love computers again!
Mih said,
April 16, 2008 @ 2:18 pm · Quote
Thank you for this. Was looking for why the subs was so weird in VLC and found this, so I am using CCCP now and it works way better then VLC. Just wanted to thank you for this, realy helped me :3
The Wolfkin said,
May 12, 2008 @ 7:31 pm · Quote
sounds good. don’t have much use for it as I don’t download Anime hardcore like that but it was for this sort of knowledge that bookmarks exist.
Matt said,
May 22, 2008 @ 4:15 pm · Quote
Thanks for this writeup. I recently switched to Mac, and had encountered .mkv files with softsubs before, but usually just ran video files through MPC on my old Windows machine. Needless to say VLC was frustrating me with how it displayed subtitles. I found that QuickTime with Perrian worked, and installing Miro was a nice touch as well, but they were simply memory hogs that would lag my machine during playback. I tried Mplayer after a friend suggested it, but couldn’t get the subtitles to display properly. After following your steps, they display properly, and my machine doesn’t lag when I play back my downloaded eps of Code Geass R2! ^_^ \/
Thanks for the info.
Jetrois said,
May 28, 2008 @ 3:31 pm · Quote
I’m a Mac Addect and to ease the trouble of most Mac anime fans just install Perian http://perian.org and watch all anime in quicktime no fuss with vlc i keep it for just in case